Re: No more Pollings!

[Donald Wagner <polearmed@worldnet.att.net>]

Poster: Donald Wagner <polearmed@worldnet.att.net>

Your Grace, and those listening!!

"Jeffrey C. Sussman" wrote:
> 
> Poster: "Jeffrey C. Sussman" <JSussman@erols.com>
> 
> Greetings from Richard!
> 
> In my opinion, verbal pollings are a bad idea.  Verbal pollings selectively
> poll the members of an order who happen to be at some event.  This
> disenfranchises the members who don't happen to be at that event and robs
> them of their one "right" as member of the order, which is the right to
> advise the Crowns on any potential candidate.  I also believe this creates
> an explicit responsibility on the parts of the Crown to read all polling
> responses, but I digress.

Rights don't come sans responsibilities.  How many members have you
heard complain about an inductee when they didn't answer a poll, or
didn't call to offer their opinion to TRMs when they heard the companion
was being discussed with other members?  Looking from a different side,
demanding that all pollings come in written form is another way to make
the Crown genuflect before the order.  The idea that in Atlantia we will
see "kangaroo court pollings" without consequences coming from the
orders is ludicrous.  The crowns know what silence or noise can arise
from making members who don't belong, especially if we already consider
ourselves powerful enough to make these demands upon the crown.

I guess I am a monarchist who would allow grand powers to the crown,
including inducting members to an order with the minimum of
consultation.  They can deal with the flak from the order if they so
choose, but the choice should still be theirs.

> 
> I don't believe that current system of pollings is broken.  Much of the
> current confusion is based on an unwarranted desire for a clear and
> consistent description (a checklist even) of what it takes to be in an
> order.

This confusion, I believe, keeps the orders from "being all they can
be".  Perception is a big issue for an order; self perception, and the
way the populace perceives them.  The order needs to feel confident in
its abilities to further interest in their relative activities and
recognize members.  The populace must have that same good opinion for
the order to be respected and held in general good esteem.  When the
populace has no way to tell exactly what the "yardstick" is that the
order is using, the order is suspect from the beginning.  Alleviating
the mystery will go along way toward ending that.

> 
> If we, instead, accept that each member of an order has a slightly different
> yard stick by which they measure candidates and each set of royalty has yet
> another yard stick and that decisions are made in an unequal combination of
> all these opinions (since the Crowns make the final decisions) we don't have
> a problem.

The "yardstick", as you put it, can never be standardized; however, the
aspects that we as order members measure with that yardstick -can-. 
That is what was discussed by Duke McKenzie.

> 
> There is no objective standard.  The standards are based on the opinions of
> the people involved.  We could get into a discussion about consensus
> building, campaigning and information distribution but again I digress.
> 

There is nothing even close to an objective standard because the orders
haven't built one.  Without that, it can look like a popularity contest
and the orders' validation flies out the proverbial portcullis.  I spent
the last three years in AT&T training teams and holding team building
exercises, and diverse opinions about something -can- be effectively
quantified with the right amount of discussion and shared learning.

> "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"  (Who wrote that?  And, did I
> quote it right?)

Probably some other Duke who was afraid of the work it would take to
quantify currently vague requirements, and needed a pithy little remark
to use as an excuse.(That was meant as a joke.  After his term as Earl
Marshal, all of us know that Duke Gilcrest isn't afraid of work)

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